I bring mad flava to every pageant. Four bags of mad flava, actually. Skittles. Taste the rainbow and eat my dust.
Lawd have mercy. You try living with Beyoncé in the house every day. I feel your pain, Solange.
I’m back, bitches. I’m a little taller and a whole lot flatter, but I’m back. Come on, girls! Strike a pose.
Up in the club, just woke up, doin’ my own sugar zing. Wakin’ up, with a sippy cup, I couldn’t care less what you think.
Oh. Hell. No. Get my lawyer on the phone.
Did someone just say Ladies with an Attitude? Cooty Boys with Bratitude?
Come on, Vogue.
Or something like that.
It was Attack of the Shrinky Dink Divas this week when Toddlers & Tiaras unleashed miniaturized versions of Beyoncé and Madonna on an unsuspecting New Jersey.
That’s right. The Hollywood Stars Pageant came to town and brought with it everything from pre-school Playboy Bunnies to little Lady Gagas (…soooo last year, by the way…) but the Big Newz was definitely the Return of Mia-donna and the arrival of a new up-and-coming Sasha Fierce who went head to sleepy head on the pageant stage.
According to Pageant Director Jonel Stanek, who unfortunately was pretty low key and nowhere near as insane as I prefer my Pageant Directors to be when they give their run downs, the HSP was going above and beyond just the played out crown and bouncy castles that most competitions offer up as prizes.
Been there. Done that.
Beside receiving an overly massive crown that would undoubtedly slide all the way over the winner’s head and land on her shoulders like a crystallized post-surgery/don’t lick yourself Petco collar, the Ultimate Grand Supreme Deep Dish title holder would also score a sash and stash combo as well as a meaty savings bond.
But wait. There’s more.
This time around the competition was bringing their “A” Game, because the winner would also walk away with a contract from a top secret talent agency and most likely go on to win an Oscar and get their pretty feet stuck in cement down at that Chinese Theater where all the fake celebs pose with tourists.
At least that is the impression I got from Jonel when she explained that Pageant Kids have the inside scoop on Hollywood. Good to know.
She never quite got around to explaining why a Hollywood themed pageant so full of insider info that was guaranteed to catapult some young princess up and over the wall and into the movie biz was being held in New Jersey, but then again I know that most people don’t like to talk about New Jersey. Period. Between Snookie and the girls down at The Gatsby Salon, there’s already enough New Jersey reality to make you want to poke your eyes out. So I cut her some slack.
And speaking of poking your eye out…
The first contestant we ran into was a flashback from 2010 and lucky for us…and both of our eyeballs…she wasn’t wearing her cone bra when we ran into her.
Mia was back!
You remember Mia, right? Cute. Button eyes. Blonde hair. No?
How about gold metallic cone bra? Does that ring a bell?
Yeah. I figured that would do it.
Everyone’s favorite cone bra wearing, pelvic bone grinding 2 year old Madonna lookalike was back, two years older and wiser, and ready for her next Madge Moment.
Now a whopping 4 years old, Mia had quickly risen to scandalous fame the minute Mom Tina sent her into Pageant War wearing bite sized gold boobs and a pony tail. Granted, Mia’s BabyGap knockers weren’t quite as sharp and deadly as the original version…Mia had a softer, Muppet-ized version strapped to her infant chest…but it still got the point across and scored them both some uncomfortable TMZ screen time.
Mom’s explanation of the “lots of different reactions” to the boob cones was delightfully awkward, as she looked around like a Mom does when she tries to carry on a conversation with important houseguests while hoping they don’t notice that strange smell in the room. Commenting that Mia was 4 now and while running in circles in a gold stripper bra is cute when you’re 2, the gold bra may not be as appropriate for a 4 year old as it was for a 2 year old (…pause here if you need to scratch your head and do some math…) so she wouldn’t be able to get away with that anymore. Girlfriend needed a routine to impress the judges this time around.
A Madonna routine. Der.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Just change the undergarments, add some extensions and send it back up on stage.
Diva #2 was a relative newcomer to the Pageant World, but not to the Sassy Self Confidence World.
Head popping, finger snapping 7 year old Casey immediately let us know that she brings mad flava to every single pageant she attends. Every single one.
All four of them is what I think she meant, since the HSP would make #5 in her lengthy Glitz & Glam career. But 5 is more than I’ve done, so she wins this round. Knowing that she was going to do her Beyoncé imitation for the competition would have given her the win by default regardless, because you know I love me some Single Ladies Dancing, but I gave it to her based strictly on trophy count this time around.
Mom Melissa was a sweetheart but was apparently just now beginning to realize what she had gotten herself into by signing that contract with the Pageant Devil.
Unintentionally comparing Pageant Moms to a life sentence with no chance of parole, Melissa used adjectives like Stress, Chaos and Torture and pretty much always seemed to coast through her day looking as though someone had just rudely jarred her awake from a nap on the couch. Wha-? Where am I? Who left the TV on?
Needless to say, I immediately loved her and all the support she gave to Sasha Casey. She just didn’t seem to know what day it was yet. But I’m sure that all comes with time and money and candy.
Pimpin’, and Pageanting, ain’t easy. It can’t be.
Someone who did not seem to have any trouble napping, on the other hand, was 5 year old Kelsey. That little nugget could fall asleep crossing the street.
When she was awake, she was a firecracker. A bundle of energy. But for the most part, she liked to fall asleep and fake out falling asleep and fake it until she really fell asleep.
She zonked out during one or two of her closeups and even blacked out during hair and makeup time at the pageant. If you can fall asleep standing up like a cow in Farmer Brown’s pasture, or while you’re sitting there getting hot rollers ripped out of your fake hair, then I salute you.
And your Narcolepsy.
Seriously. If Kelsey was a dude, and in college at a frat party, she would totally be the Pledge who always passes out and gets drawn on with a Sharpie. The one who has to go to the internship the next day with a permanent magic marker fu manchu mustache and “I like d***s” scrawled across his forehead.
Since Kelsey kept dozing off, we didn’t get much info out her the first time around, which was unfortunate because I really wanted to know why there was a big First Aid kit on the kitchen table while she was practicing her beauty walk. Now we’ll never know and it’ll bug me all weekend.
This time around, the Madonna outfit of choice was the Jean Paul Gaultier bustier/garter ensemble from whatever year Tour that was where Madge kept yanking at her cootch. The combo platter of tight garter straps yanked snuggly over black pant wedgies must have made for some historic Toe de la Camél as they kinda, sorta probably might say in Gaultier’s old neighborhood.
Hopefully little Mia wasn’t going to suffer the same fate.
Mia loved her new outfit. And she loved her new routine. It’s too bad she didn’t love the Beauty portion of the event though, because getting Mia-donna to focus and get her cupcake moves on was painful for everyone involved in the process.
Practicing in what I guess was the basement family room over at Pageant Coach Krisann Binetti’s house, Mia sulked and moped and almost bored herself into a Kelsey coma.
Since there wasn’t much else going on, it did give me time to enjoy the basement decor and wonder if all those CSI crime scene tape marks were always on the floor or if they were something special laid out for Mia. Sometimes I think Pageant People spend more money on painter’s tape than they do on hairspray.
Did someone just mention Hairspray? The Musical?
Kelsey’s Celebrity Wear routine was going to be an homage to the show, complete with a life size Aqua Net bottle that actually squirted out a cloud of fake aerosol. Mom Jillian had channeled her Inner Martha Stewart and created the giant phallic-y looking thing from Gawd knows what all on her own.
(No, I don’t know if phallic-y is a real word or not. Feel free to use it repeatedly at your job for a week or two and then see what the general consensus is when you get fired.)
The ginormous spray can had a backdoor that you could step into, much like the things they deploy when coal miners get trapped underground. Granted, this piece of tubular arts & crafts would only come in handy if Vidal Sasoon got trapped underground, but you get the idea.
After a few facials and a spray tan for a little girl of color (…which I will never fully understand as long as I live…) it was finally Pageant Day, and Emcee Matty Giuliano was ready to do some announcing. And possibly some knee breaking as well, because he totally had that Jersey meets Staten Island meets MobWives kind of accent.
My favorite new thing is to try and figure out what the Emcees all do for their day jobs, but since I can never seem to find out the legit deets online I tend to make stuff up a lot.
Given that he called himself Matty instead of Matt or Mathew, I’m going to have to pass on this one because all I can think of is Tony Pepperoni or Matty Mozzarella or something. And I like my knee caps, thank you.
The only thing that I will say about Matty is that he appears to be the one person in America who has never heard of Beyoncé, because he introduced Casey’s alter ego like he was giving the list of specials at an Italian restaurant.
Ladies and Gentlemen…Beee-on-Saaaaaaaaay! That would be a no, Mathew.
And a little stuffed bunny rabbit somehow how ended up on his podium midway through the competition, which was odd. How does that even happen? Now I’m done.
The Beauty portion was as boring as Mia said it would be. The only excitement came when she yanked and poked at her new flipper. Over and over. On. Stage.
I know, right? Flipper yanking. The kiss of death for high scores. And also something that doesn’t sound very Dolphin-friendly in the age we live in nowadays.
Mom had an aneurysm and everything went to slo-mo like a scene in an action movie.
Casey was too peppy for one judge, while Kelsey somehow snapped herself awake and nailed her Beauty Walk right like a pro.
She managed to maintain that alertness for her theme routine as well, and nailed the Vidal Sassoon Rescue Pod portion of the competition as well.
Some Jersey lookin’ woman in the Mia Camp gave Mia-donna one of those Ring Pops that you suck on like a Kardashian right before she was about to go on stage and do her routine, which resulted in Mia’s face, mouth and teeth looking like she had just gnawed on a urinal cake.
Panic mode.
By the time they scrubbed her mouth out and shoved her back on stage, poor little Mia didn’t know which end was up and basically just stood around and forgot to take off her Gualtier jacket, which pretty much defeated the purpose of wearing her underwear on the outside.
Just not one of Mia’s better days, which explained why she slipped into her own Kelsey coma and we never heard from her again. Even when she won something they had to lug her up on stage like a laundry bag. But she’s a cutie.
The night belonged to Sasha Casey who managed to make her entrance through a tangled up web of shiny streamers and bust out one bad a** Single Ladies Dance.
Since TLC is saving all their money in case they need to sue me later on for talking smack every week, they couldn’t afford to buy the rights to the actual Beyoncé tune. It was close. But I think it was sung by The Wiggles or one of those Girl Groups who go to schools and sing about Patty Cakes to kindergarteners.
But it got the point across.
And it won Casey the Ultimate Grand Supreme, which Matty announced by walking down into the audience like he was on Let’s Make A Deal. Mom spazzed out. The Pointer Sisters, or whoever all those other people sitting with her were, also spazzed out and everyone was loving the mad flava.
If you like it then you better put some Bling on it, bitches.
